Arrivederci Giulia? Looks like it...

Looks a bit like a Stellantis casualty: https://www.pistonheads.com/news/ph-eurocars/alfa-romeo-set-to-cull-giulia-platform/44066

Does make me wonder if I should do the lease buyout next year, go completely nuts and get a QV, or be sensible and use a few year old E36 M3(ish)box as a commuter if I am commuting again by then.

Buy up all the cool old gasburners you can find. They won't be making any more of them. 

Kind of like real estate. 

In reply to Snowdoggie (Forum Supporter) :

Not sure that's good advice.  There are plenty of cars not worthy. And as society shifts to electric  how expensive will gasoline become?  
     It's cheap right now because of volume. But once that drops off will we continue to use  more and more expensive oil?  

In reply to frenchyd :

Yeah. Yeah. I know. I just read another article about how in the near future nobody will own a car anymore and we will depend on self driving cars rented by the mile. Then they decide where you go, when you go and even if you go. Not a bright future. But then, I may not live long enough to see it. 

Electric != self driving.

I've already got a shop full of gasoline powered cars in various states of disassemblement, I don't think I'll need more of those. Keep in mind the Giulia is my daily and whatever I do with it and replace it with will have to double as a daily as well.

I can see myself driving an electric car in the future, but right now I'm not sure that the infrastructure is where I'd need it to be due to my work travel. Well, unless I buy something like a used Model S.

IF you get a QV who is going to service it. Are they staying the in the states? I thought they had dropped the Miata based car as well as the 4c and now the sedan. What do they really have left.

In reply to wearymicrobe :

That's definitely a concern. I don't expect my "local" dealer to close up shop (they're Maserati/Alfa, not Fiat/Alfa like so many that had most of the cheaper cars pulled from them) but I am a tad concerned about timely spares availability. And it's not only the Giulia that's affected, but also the Stelvio SUV as that's the same platform.

For a daily, waiting for, say, a $50 part coming from Italy whenever they get around to putting it into the mail over there just doesn't do it.

BoxheadTim said:

Electric != self driving.

I've already got a shop full of gasoline powered cars in various states of disassemblement, I don't think I'll need more of those. Keep in mind the Giulia is my daily and whatever I do with it and replace it with will have to double as a daily as well.

I can see myself driving an electric car in the future, but right now I'm not sure that the infrastructure is where I'd need it to be due to my work travel. Well, unless I buy something like a used Model S.

I think it is going to take a lot longer and cost a lot more to change over from gas burners to electric cars than most of them think. Especially if they make EVs expensive. It took close to 100 years to build the current system of supertankers and refineries and gas stations where gas is delivered out into rural areas as far as every winding two lane road can go. The urban areas will be changed first but there will be a long period of time where EVs and gasburners will share the road. And even after the EVs take over there will still be race tracks out in the country where gas burning cars will be raced as a hobby. Kind of like the way people use horses today. It will probably be an expensive hobby but watching old Porsches and Alfas go around a track will be much more interesting than watching generic GMs and Stelantuses quietly chase each other around a track. 

I think the Giulia was a great design, but there wasn't a whole lot else drawing me or my wife to it. We went with a G8 GT instead which outperforms the Giulia, and we'd be able to just leave it in a ditch and lose less money than the Giulia would've depreciated by now. Then there's the maintenance - we chose the ubiquitous GM V8 over an Italian engine for obvious reasons. Still, when I see a Giulia in traffic I get kinda tempted, especially a QF. 

I would love be to watch whisper quiet Stillanterds and GMs blow past Alfas and Mustangs for the first half of a two hour race then as they all run out of power watch the dinosaurs creep back up the boards. 

Snowdoggie (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to frenchyd :

Yeah. Yeah. I know. I just read another article about how in the near future nobody will own a car anymore and we will depend on self driving cars rented by the mile. Then they decide where you go, when you go and even if you go. Not a bright future. But then, I may not live long enough to see it. 

The market place is going to decide which program works.  Just like always.  Frankly I can't see the market place accepting those sorts of restrictions. 
      It will take at least another 20 years before Electric cars are dominate.  During that period there will be a flood of used ICE cars to select from.  Then likely another 20 years before ICE cars are  mostly gone.  
As for self driving?  Probably be just like cruise control.   Slow acceptance at first  until people get comfortable with it.   To this day my wife won't use cruise control.  But I rely on it, one less thing to focus on when I'm busy watching what my kids are doing back in the bus.  
       

QuasiMofo (John Brown) said:

I would love be to watch whisper quiet Stillanterds and GMs blow past Alfas and Mustangs for the first half of a two hour race then as they all run out of power watch the dinosaurs creep back up the boards. 

When that happens they will have quick change batteries and the pit crew will have the battery swap down to 5.9 seconds while the tire change will still take 12.7 seconds. 

Saw this coming.  A QV is a $85k car new and the first ones they brought over were nightmares reliability wise.  The cars that Car and Driver and Road and Track long term tested were abysmal.  They were already having to deal with a negative reliability association here and that just killed them right out of the gate.

There's one Alfa dealer in town, I have no desire to try and service a QV once they're gone, which I'm sure they will be shortly.  Where will you get parts from?  Who will have the proper scan tools and experience to work on it at an Indy shop?  Even buying one used it's still a heap of money, I just don't care to deal with what could be a time bomb reliability wise AND have to struggle to find a good shop to fix it.

A friend ordered an early one. Dealer decided that it should have more on it just in case he backed out so it would be easier to sell. The car he thought he ordered had another $12k in options so we walked which made the dealer say "see, that's why I ordered it like this, I knew you were going to do this!" A year later they had one in stock VERY similar to the order he placed. I went with him to go look at it. Dealer policy was no test drive unless ALL paperwork for a purchase had been completed. He walked away from that too. The whole thing was weird. 

That does seem like a peculiar business model: accept an order from a customer, then fail to honour it; or, alternatively, put up huge obstacles to ensure that a customer cannot decide whether to proceed with an order.

Just out of interest, is this dealer still in business?

(Sorry for the threadjack.)

IMHO, the cars they started with were really good.  But then they didn't bother with any other model- something smaller, perhaps.  Not cheaper, but more compact.  And it was odd that the cars racing in the US were not for sale here- the Giulietta that is raced can't be bought, and the Giulia was not raced- what's up with that?

And while the early marketing was pretty interesting, it fell of really quickly.  It's almost as if they expected a repeat of 1991 in terms of sales, ignoring 1992-1995.

And noting the Fiat 500 and all of it's variants in the US, this is all on the shoulders of FCA's marketing and planning groups.  They were trying to be BMW - the 500 for the MINI, Giulia to the 3/5 series, and the Stelvio to the X cars.  How they failed was just not getting the word out wide enough.  One key part is the thinking that they could capture the BMW customers that was just looking for image- that takes time to form, and it's not as if people forget history.  

Now history repeats itself- with Alfa not gaining ground on BMW, and they give up.

What sucks for me is that this goes back a LOOOOOOOONG way- like to the 60s.  Even with the stick axle, the 105/115 cars were better than their 1600/2002 series partners.  And they had a convertible that BMW didn't have.  That changed in '75 with the 3 series vs. the Alfetta- and it was not about the car, it was about the quality.

Oh, well.  I did want to see them do well, but didn't expect much.

Ironically, today I passed a hauler carrying new Giulias. 

Can't remember where I read it but a quote I've not forgotten:  "The French and Italians have never been able to figure out the American market".

Having been a Fiat fanboi back in the 80s-90s I dealt with the aftermath of the end of importation.

Now that Stellwhatsis has arrived and combines the worst of both worlds I can't see any long-term success coming.

My brain is currently telling my heart, "See?  I told you so!"

It's mostly working.

In reply to alfadriver :

I agree on the car being really good - it has some quirks to keep Doug DeMuro happy, but overall my 2019 middle of the range model appears to be well screwed together and generally just works.

It also has a playfulness that is missing from so many of its competitors.

OTOH the initial quality issues with the QV didn't help, and the dealer network - which is relatively good on the East Coast, at least compared to out West - still requires a fair bit of traveling even to the 'local' dealers.

In reply to Stealthtercel :

I'm sure it was unique to this particular dealer. The dealer was one of the "urban boutique" dealers that was set up and seemed to be about selling experience instead of cars. 

mazdeuce - Seth said:

Dealer policy was no test drive unless ALL paperwork for a purchase had been completed. 

That's because the Dealer knows there's a solid chance the car will break down on the test drive and they want you to own it by then. 

Also, the name Stelvio is a really bad name in the US. Sounds to me like a mix of fake sugar and a synthetic marijuana-like drug.